Smoking Something: War critics are comfortably numbby Daniel ClarkThe summary of a recent Pentagon report says there was "no 'smoking gun'"connecting Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. One can just imagine how furiouslysomebody must have lobbied to have that language included, because thoseare the same three magical words that have been successfully used toconvince the public that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.Because the "smoking gun" standard is entirely subjective, the existenceof such a thing can never be proven, at least not to the satisfaction of adetermined contrarian. Thus have the most intransigent critics of the wareffort succeeded in granting themselves veto power over the facts.Regardless of the evidence of Saddam's WMD, there cannot be a "smokinggun" until Hans Blix, Cindy Sheehan and the New York Times agree to saythat there is.That's the degree of denial that's necessary to characterize the Pentagonreport as anything other than an absolute vindication of the war in Iraq.That study, comprised of information culled from the evidence left behindby Saddam's government, makes it clear to all but the willfully obtusethat removing the Iraqi dictator was essential to any serious effort tocombat terrorism.A Senate Intelligence Committee report issued in 2006 had taken animprisoned Saddam Hussein's word for it that he had not cooperated withal-Qaeda, although the terror group had met repeatedly with his IraqiIntelligence Service (IIS). This new study, which has received far lessmedia attention, tells another story. "Captured documents reveal that theregime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be partof al-Qaeda," it concludes, "as long as that organization's near-termgoals supported Saddam's long-term vision."The identities of two of Saddam's beneficiaries ought to be enough tocause the Senate to rescind, and apologize for, its attempted exonerationof the deposed Iraqi government. One of those groups is Egyptian IslamicJihad, Ayman al-Zawahiri's organization that became the nucleus ofal-Qaeda. The other is the Afghani Islamic Party, which Stephen Hayes ofThe Weekly Standard tells us controlled that part of Afghanistan whereOsama bin Laden established his training camps in the early 90s.In addition, Saddam has funded Ansar al-Islam, which has become the coreof al-Qaeda in Iraq, as well as Filipino al-Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf,and a Bahrainian group called the Army of Muhammad, which an IIS documentdescribes as an "offshoot of bin Laden" whose use of a different title"can be a way of camouflaging the organization."This tells us not only that Iraq was collaborating with al-Qaeda, but thatit was doing so surreptitiously. That's why we're learning that Saddamassisted many affiliates of, and precursors to, bin Laden's organization,but we're not likely to find a picture of the Butcher of Baghdad directlyhanding Osama an enormous check, as if he'd just won the Dinah ShoreClassic.Not that it would make any difference, as long as we are operating underthe "smoking gun" standard. Even if we had a video of the two men's lipsmeeting as they nibbled their way from opposite ends of a long strand ofspaghetti, the Democrats and therefore the news media would forcefullydeny any relation between them. They'd probably even argue that if the twovillains were really in cahoots, they'd never be careless enough to beseen together.Perhaps because of our gullibility regarding dual-use materials related toSaddam's WMD programs, he seems to have understood that all he needed wasa modicum of deniability in order to placate the West. If an al-Qaedaterror cell wanted to be eligible for Iraqi funding, all it needed to dowas change its name to al-Cougar Mellencamp, and it could count on therest of the world to play dumb.By swiftly dismissing the evidence as it arises, the three magic wordshave spared the "Bush lied" chorus responsibility for everything aboutwhich it has been proven wrong. Critics of inaccurate prewar intelligencehave themselves been far less accurate in their anti-war intelligence,such as their certainty that Islamic terrorists would never cooperate withan infidel like Saddam. As long as they maintain that there's "no smokinggun" to the contrary, however, they need never admit fault.By refusing to accept unwanted realities, they've relegated themselves tothe land of the anti-war lotus-eaters, where they remain comfortably numbto the impact of the emerging facts. The tragedy is that most Americannews consumers have become unwittingly trapped in that haze-fillednetherworld with them.-- Daniel Clark is a Staff Writer for the New Media Alliance. The NewMedia Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers,journalists and grass-roots media outlets.